DAGARDENGUY Question

"My dog" has a question for you. What purpose, if any, do squirrels serve in nature (garden)? "My dog" seems to think they're only good for chasing, nothing more. "My dog" feels their connection or "place" in the scheme of nature is to provide "my dog" with entertainment and prey chasing opportunities. Is "my dog" right or are squirrels a truly important cog in the wheel of nature (garden)?

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I just have to butt in when I see one your posts. I know your question is for dagardenguy.

Don't know the complete story on Mom Nature's plan for squirrels, but I would speculate that a part of it was to take advantage of the squirrel's propensity to store nuts for food. They constantly bury acorns, pecans, walnuts and other nuts. Since they don't have a map or a computer to track all of these little treasure chests, many stay in the ground and sprout the next spring. It is Mom Nature's way of getting some planting done with the pay being a few nuts. So far, the squirrels haven't held a strike for better pay. Maybe they know Mom will not "shell" out more.

Very funny Heron, then again we have a lot of trees, a few less trees here and there would be OK --- I think we have a surplus ... after all, look how some companies just keep cutting them ALL down. lol

"Way down deep I'm very superficial" - ALEA IACTA EST - "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

Consider all things in nature part of gigantic meshing gears. Everything serves a purpose to something else. The squirrels eats some of the nuts .. culling the production of future trees..they plant some nuts thus, as herron55 points out, increasing germination of some trees. And while this is going on they provide a food source for animals higher on the food chain.

This is why I always bristle when people say something about a creature needing to be destroyed. I came from the West Coast where coyotes are the bane of newly sprouted communities. People who bought the new homes scream "kill the coyotes"! And after they kill the coyotes they wonder why the rats have increase all of a sudden. Killing part of the food chain always affects another part of the food chain.

By the same token I hear people here talk about killing the anoles (those green and sometimes brown) lizards. I've heard people say with great glee that their dogs torture and kill them and the green tree frogs. These will be the same folks who say...Boy the bugs are really bad this year.... not realizing that the lizards and frogs are a direct link to the population of insects during any seaonal period.

Everyone must realize that animals and the rest of things put on earth are here for a purpose. Squirrels...coyotes....man....everything is here for a purpose.

Hope that answers your question. This is one subject I feel very deeply about.

ROFL, I was kind of being facetious here --- um, it was a joke. I understand the connection of all, "my dog" doesn't. lol

PS: Regarding the word facetious, it uses all five vowels just once and in alphabetical order (others are abstemious, abstentious, annelidous, casesious and fracedinous). If y is counted as a vowel, then facetiously uses all six vowels in alphabetical order. You learn something NEW everyday, eh?! lol

"Way down deep I'm very superficial" - ALEA IACTA EST - "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

Well they could have made it a little easier, but hard nonetheless if they just asked someone to write down a word with all the vowels in order, except "Y". You could pick from a few words, but how many of us have ever thought to think about such things. Like my dad always says: "Who cares? Is that going to make you any money?" lol It's just perfect for Jeopardy, then I could turn to him say "Well, you see? It could have made me some money." ;)

"Way down deep I'm very superficial" - ALEA IACTA EST - "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

I wonder what mites are good for ... can every species (except man) have a justified existence because they provide food for some slightly higher form of life?

Ovidsen, I guess Alfred Hitchcock was WAY ahead of his time. ;) "Look BOSS, the birds, the birds!"

If they don't stop these singular terrorist squirrels here and now, what's to stop them from finding a unified theory of the world, organizing into sleeper cells and going on some sort of crazed jihad throughout the land marauding little 4 year olds in the parks? This is necessary under the doctrine of premptive species extermination. lol

"Way down deep I'm very superficial" - ALEA IACTA EST - "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

Squirrels are no more than fuzzy tree rats; how ANYONE can think that they are cute or innocent is beyond me. They are actually infamous for going into open windows after small children...

I hate them, and am teaching Sasha to sneak up on them like the cats do, so she can toss them in the air, too! Things she catches she likes to grab midsection and FLIP, biting in half before she lets go. Awesome to watch.

She almost got one unwary one at the Jazz Festival in Forsyth Park today... she's fast but they have TREES. But she's taller than they think when she stands on her hind legs. BWHAHAHAHAH

Next, I'm gonna train her on deer... that is what she's bred for, after all...

Zeus nailed his first at 6 months, I never heard anything squeal (protest) so loudly and so much in all my life. He uses the paw on the back technique to pin them down first before he applies the jaws of death on the jugular. lol

"Way down deep I'm very superficial" - ALEA IACTA EST - "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

They keep landscapers in business. Rich people must pay working class people (landscapers) to repair all the holes squirrels dig in the lawn. Thus they really tiny Robin Hoods in fuzzy tights.
Or in the case of people who can't afford landscapers (me), they destroy my lawn, thus negating my need to water it. That could make them water conservationists.
But in my dog's eyes -- they are Must See Squirrel TV. They watch them out the sliding glass door all day long, thus preventing them from getting bored enough to chew on my furniture. So they are cheap babysitters too.

Mississippi Squirrel Revival
(Ray Stevens)
Well when I was a kid I would take a trip
Every summer down to "Mississipp,"
To visit my Granny and her antebellum world.
I'd run barefooted all-day long,
Climbing trees free as a song;
One day I happened to catch myself a squirrel.
Well I stuffed him down in an old shoe box,
And punched a couple holes in the top;
When Sunday came I snuck him in the Church.
I was sittin' way back on the very last pew
Showin' em' to my good buddy Hugh,
When that squirrel got loose and went totally berserk.
Well what happened next is hard to tell;
Some thought it was Heaven others thought it was Hell,
But the fact that something was among was plain to see.
As the choir sang " I Surrender All",
The squirrel ran up Harv Newman's coveralls,
And Harv leaped to his feet and said something's got a hold on me!

The day the squirrel went berserk
In the First Self-Righteous Church
In that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.
It was a fight for survival
That broke out in revival.
They were jumpin' pews and shoutin' "Hallelujah".

Well Harv hit the aisles dancin' and screamin'.,
Some thought he had religion others thought he had a demon,
And Harv thought he had a weed-eater loose in his fruit-of-the-looms.
He fell to his knees to plead and beg,
And the squirrel ran out of his britches leg;
Unobserved to the other side of the room.
All the way down to the AMEN pew,
Where sat Sister Bertha Better-than-You,
Who had been watching all of the commotion with sophistic glee.
But shoot, you should have seen the look in her eyes
When that squirrel jumped her garters and crossed her thighs.
And she jumped to her feet and said, "Lord have mercy on me."

As that squirrel made laps inside her dress
She began to cry and then to confess,
To sins that would make a sailor blush with shame.
She told of gossip, and church dissention,
But the thing that got the most attention
Was when she talked about her love life and then she started naming names.

The day the squirrel went berserk
In the First Self-Righteous Church
In that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.
It was a fight for survival
that broke out in revival.
They were jumpin' pews and shoutin' "Hallelujah".

Well seven deacons and the pastor got saved,
And twenty-five thousand dollars got raised,
And fifty volunteered for missions in the Congo on the spot.
And even without an invitation
There were at least five hundred re-dedications,
and we all got re-baptized whether we needed it or not.
Now you've heard the Bible story I guess
Of how He parted the waters for Moses to pass.
Oh the Miracles God has wrought in this old world.
But the one I'll remember till my dying day
Is how He put that church back on the narrow way
With a half crazed Mississippi squirrel.

The day the squirrel went berserk
In the First Self-Righteous Church
In that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.
It was a fight for survival
That broke out in revival.
They were jumpin' pews and shoutin' "Hallelujah".